Weird Stats of the Day

Toronto, in its quest to extend a streak of futility to two decades (that is to say, they have not only not won the World Series, nor even appeared in the playoffs in 18 years, they've not even really nodded at contending) lost again yesterday afternoon to the Detroit Tigers.

This loss followed a previous 9-0 defeat on Saturday afternoon in a game that, aside from the no-hitter (and near perfect game - a single walk spoiled that) by Detroit's Justin Verlander, was pretty unremarkable.

Sunday's loss dropped the Jays to 3-13 thus far in day baseball games (source: ESPN.COM).  Now, the Blue Jays are 15-19 over-all, which means that the team is 12-6 in night baseball games.

Put those two records side by side:

Day:    3-13
Night: 12-6

That's a very odd juxtaposition, don't you think?

During the day, the Blue Jays as a team are hitting a robust .204, the worst in the American League (the league average is .253).  At night, the team hits .282, which is not only the highest in the American League, but is so by a fairly healthy margin (Cleveland is second, at .268).  For what it's worth, the AL batting average is, collectively, .246 at night.

The pattern is not repeated for Toronto pitching, who yield a .240 BA during day games, and .239 at night.

So not only do the Jays see widely different fortunes in their day/night splits - basically going from the 1968 Washington Senators to the 1927 Yankees in a sense - but have exactly the opposite pattern the rest of the league shows.

It's generally thought to be easier to hit during the day, when natural light makes it easier to see the ball, so I'm curious as to just why this might be.


A second fun stat is that yesterday's losing pitcher, Jo-Jo Reyes, has now failed to win a game in 25 consecutive starts, spanning back nearly three years (his last win was in June 2008, with Atlanta).  In that span of games, Reyes has gone 0-12, with an ERA of 6.11.

In my lifetime, only two pitchers have gone that long without a win.  Anthony Young went 27 starts between 1990 and 1992 without a win (0-17), and Matt Keough set the pace with zero wins in 28 straight starts from 1977-1978 (0-18).

Keough, of course, was famous for setting the standard for futility in the modern era, with a 2-17 W/L record in 1979.

We may see history of a sort made this year - if Reyes, who is "out of options" keeps going out to the mound.

Stay tuned.

Somewhere, Over a Barrel

The price of oil (and therefore, gasoline and just about everything else) is up. That's not so good.  But I really had to laugh at the hypocrisy of Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Land of Make Believe), who is now calling for hearings into price spikes and "speculation."

In the past,  I thought that fossil fuel consumption was "bad." Senator Boxer has been amongst the loudest voices calling for "carbon taxes," and has been a leader in searching for ways to curb the use of fossil fuels.

What does the esteemed Senator from California THINK would happen if her taxes were put in place??? Is she really that ignorant of economics?  It seems that, if gasoline prices go to $4 or $5, or $8 per gallon (Think: European-style pricing) due to taxes, that's A-OK.  But if market forces somehow result in high prices?  Well, that just won't do.

It's one thing if "The Government" get the money to play around with.  But private individuals?  Ms. Boxer and the nanny-staters have deemed profits to be unsuitable for your use... you're such children, after all.

I truly suspect in this case that Senator Boxer really is dumb, and not just trying to score cheap, political points.

Apparently, in a speech on 15th July 2008 (the last time we saw large price spikes), her mathematical ignorance was on full display, when she offered that "8 years, divided by 2 Oil Men in the White House, equals $4 per gallon."

WELLLL.... now that the White House has two decidedly "non-oil men" (a "community organiser" and whatever it is the Biden was doing when not getting bad hair replacement surgery), how does Ms. Boxer's ratio hold up? 


Eight years divided by two "oil" men = $4 per gallon gasoline.


Two years divided by zero oil men equals... Uh-oh...

Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak (or, at Least to Read and Write?)

The above question was posed a century ago , first in Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion," and later, in the more well-known adaptation, "My Fair Lady."

The question is followed up by the observation:

Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And Hebrews learn it backwards, which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English you're regarded as a freak.
Oh, WHY can't the English learn to speak?"

It turns out, not only are the English unable to speak, a good lot of them can't read or write, either.  According to a recent article by U.K. Secretary for Education Michael Gove, writing in the Daily Telegraph, 63% of white, working-class English children could neither read nor write properly.

His solution is to try to encourage a culture of reading, which of course, I am all for.  It's a terrific idea that children should carry around books rather than tweeting, bleating, blinking gadgets.

I do, however, find it somewhat amusing Mr Gove's observations that similar U.S. youngsters have an inculcated love of books and reading, and that, for once, someone is wishing the youth of his nation be more like Americans:

Visiting America last month, I was struck by the way a culture of reading is instilled in every child at the earliest possible age, even in schools serving the poorest pupils. In Washington DC, a group of children stopped, in the middle of an engineering project, to tell me about their favourite novels

All I can say to that is, "Huh?"

Shaw, also in "Pygmalion" commented, on the use of English, that "well, in America, they haven't used it for years."

Shaw once famously quipped that the British and the Americans are two peoples separated by a common language.  Here, I might suggest to Michael Gove that that separation has been replaced by a common intellectual sloth and laziness.  In the abandonment of proper diction and grammar, I would suggest that that gap has closed, though who has raced to close it is subject to debate.

Hint: In my opinion, it's not that Americans have run to catch UP...

Here There Be Dragons

The full data from the 2010 U.S. Census are starting to come out in spits and spurts.  These publications pique my interests both as a mathematician and a curious observer of political trends.  That our national population is now greater than 300 million, and that what accounts for the "typical" face has changed since 1965, and is accelerating should surprise no one other than, say the residents of a sketch comedy skit from 20 years ago who pronounced to be shocked at the killing of President Kennedy (on the 25th anniversary of the event) because they "were watching another channel."

No; one has to delve a bit further down into the data to start coming across little nuggets of truly novel information.  One such analysis of U.S. Census data projected that the population of this country would grow to nearly 400 million, and that roughly eight of nine new residents (86% of the growth) will be due to immigration trends post-1992.  The plot below puts it somewhat more graphically:

I haven't run or attempted to validate the models, but assuming this chart is even half correct, this trend is likely to have consequences.  Now obviously, the creator of the plot has shaded the impact significantly with a notorious trick - the vertical axis does not start at zero, giving the somewhat misleading impression that the "native" population will be dwarfed by newcomers, when in fact, the TOTAL population of pre-1970s Americans will remain roughly two out of three (250 of 400 million), but the point is made.

As I once read, it's useless to pretend it won't happen, so let's get realistic an assessing what the outcome in a more or less sanguine way when it does.  Some changes will be good (think of all the new dining options we will have access to).  Some less so.  But it seems almost axiomatic that the very nature of what it means to be "American" will be different if these data and models are true.

The U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron got into a bit of hot water recently, when he commented somewhat disparagingly on the impacts of mass immigration and multi-culturalism.  His remarks were chided from a somewhat ironic angle by National Review writer John Derbyshire, in a column he wrote entitled "Muscular Liberalism".:

So Britain is now no longer the home of the British — the people Winston Churchill, in that shamefully reactionary way of his, called "The Island Race." It is just another "proposition nation" — just a place, really.

There would of course be no need for David Cameron to threaten his voters with "muscular liberalism" (it sounds even bossier and more arrogant than regular liberalism) nor to tell them that they can only "belong here" if they sign up to a list of poli-sci propositions (if a native of Madagascar assents to those propositions does he thereby become British? if a Briton declines to assent to them, will he lose his citizenship?) — there would be no need for any of this vapid blather if Cameron and his predecessors had not opened up their country to settlement by millions of aliens from radically different cultures.

Generally, I enjoy Mr Derbyshire's writing, and agree with a lot that he has to say.  But the conclusions he draws from his conjecture seem to be...well, wrong.  I do agree with the basis of his musings - namely that in England, there has been an erosion of manners, a rise in the churlish hooliganism in the northern towns.  People are just less respectful and more disorderly.  Crime and welfare and lone-parent households have risen.  Basically, all of the things Americans ascribe to the stereotypical Englishman in a starched collar, rain jacket, and bowler hat with his stiff-upper lip have gone, to be replaced by the somewhat tepid soup of "Cool Britannia" mixed with a generous seasoning of general bumptiousness.

I would suggest to Mr Derbyshire that the loss of these cultural norms was orchestrated not by the immigrants from Pakistan, but rather, was fostered by the likes of the idle sons of the bored and wealthy, like the son of Pink Floyd front man David Gilmour, who was recently arrested dangling from the Cenotaph.  The growing confidence of immigrant minorities in the bravado of their own culture is the predictable consequence of the shrinking understanding and pride in what it meant to be English, not the cause of it.

I don't personally like the frankly ironic idea of "muscular liberalism," but I WOULD suggest that the answer to Mr Derbyshire is that what it means to be "British" (or more directly here, "American") is an acceptance in the ideals that make up the society, not where you were born.  More directly, to answer his question "if a native of Madagascar assents to those propositions does he thereby become British?" I would reply, simply, yes.  A nation is made up of ideas, not genetics.  It's made of a common understanding of culture and values, not ancestry and parentage.

How else to explain the famous 1967 quip of the U.K. Foreign Secretary that Lew Kwan Yew (prime minister of Singapore) was "the best bloody Englishman east of Suez?"

In the more proximate discussion on what it means to be American, I would say simply that those who wish to come to our shores, embrace the ideals of our country (life, liberty, respect for the rule of law, self-reliance, and the premise that we are all created equal), then that is an American, much more so than having the good fortune of having been born here.

Big Mac Falafal, and a Side of Fries

I was today reading the comments of one of my favourite "bloggers," Joanne Jacobs, who writes mostly about education and education issues.  (Jacobs for many years wrote a column for the San Jose Mercury News, which was the newspaper in San Jose, California, where I lived at the time).

As usual, Jacobs's musings provided an interesting potpourri of observations about the state of schools and education more broadly.  I was struck by an article she had found, published initially in the Financial Times by the renowned writer Katie Roiphe.  Roiphe, it seems, is now in the midst of the angst-ridden battle that afflicts people of a certain class on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Whilst the bulk of us perched more precariously on the edge of what the playwright Sam Shephard called "the striving class" concern ourselves with filling out brackets for the annual NCAA tournament (including people who pose as working class heroes, only with expensive, designer clothes, Secret Service protection, and access to a 747 jet at whim), a different sort of "selection" drama unfolds for people in Roiphe's circle.

Namely, the annual "which exclusive private school will my kid get into?"  Oh, and we're not talking about Harvard.  Or Andover.

Nope - this is about PRESCHOOL.

In Roiphe's own words:

When T.S. Eliot wrote about the cruelest month "mixing memory and desire", he might also have had in mind that this is the season of school admissions in New York City. So as the sooty piles of snow melt into gray puddles, parents obsess over the letters they will and won't receive from the school that will or won't confer on their radiant progeny the blessing of its approval.

You see, the ultimate fate of little Aiden or Sasha or Maya (or some other vaguely bohemian-sounding name - John just won't do) hangs in the balance, and will ultimately be determined, by the age of five.

Now, mocking  the foibles of our cultural betters has been around at least since the first time a school boy set down Pride and Prejudice in a fit of boredom and stared out the window, so there's nothing new here.  But what I found funniest was Roiphe's keen insight that the lot of limousine liberals want to impute to themselves a certain hip, diverse, but not-at-all-concerned-with-money-coolness, and the best means by which to do this is by sending the precious family dauphin to just the right school.

It HAS to have diversity, of course.  But for heaven's sake, not TOO much diversity.  Again, to quote Roiphe

These same parents will also very quickly point out that their school is "diverse". The reality is that their school, like all the other schools, is a tiny bit diverse. There are a few kids who will come a very long way every morning, from another neighbourhood, on a scholarship, but the large bulk of the class very much resembles in background the other kids in the class. This is a puzzling word, "diverse", thrown around all the school promotions, into pamphlets and brochures and websites, because if you were truly committed to sending your children somewhere "diverse", would you not be selecting a different school, one that doesn't require almost all of its students to pay tuition that could support several villages in Africa? If the catalogues were being totally honest about what parents are looking for, they advertise soupçon of diversity...

Basically put, the "diversity" in places like the sort Roiphe and others chase after the way an aging debutante in a Tennessee Williams play pursues gentlemen callers of shady means is rather like the side salads places like Wendy's offer to make us feel less guilty when ordering a Triple and a Frosty.

Goodbye (Magnetic) Yellow Brick Road

Earlier this week, the Sony Corporation announced it would cease production of its famous "Walkman" devices. For those unawares that music was actually once something one either paid for or waited patiently to hear on the radio rather than "on demand," this machine was a revolutionary little device that allowed one to listen to FM radio or cassette tapes whilst exercising, working in the yard, or engaged in some other mobile pursuit.

Oh; I reckon I ought to add that a "cassette" was a type of media that was popular somewhere back in the late Cretaceous Period that allowed one to record music for later playback.  And it involved moving parts.

My first "Walkman" was about half the size of a tissue box - it seemed incredibly compact at the time, and I used it walking back and forth to school or when cutting the lawn.  In those days, that latter task was not yet one "Americans wouldn't do."

There is little doubt in my mind that the pace of technological advancement is getting faster (see Moore's Law as an example;  devices are becoming obsolete quicker than you can say "Akihabara." ), and that generally, this is a good thing. I don't lament the passing of the Walkman.

My thoughts today are about how, with the change in technology comes another sort of evolution that is going unrecorded, and that is around the obsolescence of language itself.  In 10 years, will people know what a "cassette" was?  Or, more obliquely, will euphemisms like "rewind" remain, even though the meaning is lost?

It's a bit of a rhetorical question, but not one that's unprecedented.  Examples are manifold.  Think of the colloquialisms that are common in our language"

• "Dial" a number
• "Turn" the channel
• In the same "Area Code"
• Performing "in the clutch."

My brother in law is only 10 years younger than I am, but when I was discussing music with him some years back and mentioned listening to "45s," he was truly puzzled.  I might as well have said I heard it on the wireless or purchased scrolls for the Victrola.

No one owns a rotary phone, so "dialling" is essentially meaningless.  We use digital tuners on our televisions.  Area codes, once actually tied to physical locations are no longer applicable (my mobile is in the 408 "Area Code," which is 2500 miles away.)

So, to the Walkman, I simply quote an oldie by the Stone Ponies (a band from the late 1960s):

"Goodbye... I'll be leaving.  I see no sense, in crying and grieving."  

Were the Good Old Days REALLY that Good?

Time waits for no man, as the saying goes, and thus I like everyone fortunate not to run into medical (or other) problems of a serious sort, confront the wonders of middle age.  In looking back at memories that grow longer from a life that grows shorter, I am often struck with nostalgia.

But I wonder... Were the old days really that "good?"

Case in point.  A couple of weeks ago, in travelling home from a trip to Hawaii, we stopped for breakfast in a restaurant in LAX called "Ruby's Diner."  For those of you unfamiliar with Southern California, it's a retro-themed diner that claims to be a purveyor of "40's style food and fun" (emphasis added).

I'm not sure, exactly, what "40's style food" is (my imagination is a lot of simple meat-heavy meals fried heavily in lard), but I was struck by the idea of  "40's style fun."  When I think of the 40's, I think of a terrible war, rationing, and austerity.

What of that is "fun?"

One might argue that the times were simpler (some aspects of that may be good, some less so), or that the movies were better, or perhaps the music.  But it seems more likely just an appeal to nostalgia.

I wonder if, in history, people have always been so eager to recollect earlier times so fondly?  I'm not talking about on a personal level - most of us who are over 40 recall with some fondness our youth, when we had less responsibility, less pressure, and perhaps less weight around the middle.

Retro-style seems to be omnipresent, whether it's the new wave of nostalgia for the 1980s that has arisen with Sony's announcement that it will discontinue the "walk man," or flashback music on the radio, or movies that paint the times of Queen Elizabeth I in soft-cell light (ignoring of course the abysmal hygiene and squalor that the time held for most).

I'm a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, who wrote light opera in the Victorian era.  One of their most famous works - a play that formed the subject of the acclaimed movie "Topsy-Turvy" about 10 years ago, is "The Mikado," a comedy ostensibly about Imperial Japan, but less obviously, a satirical commentary on Victorian England itself.  In the First Act, the Lord High Executioner has a song called "I've Got a Little List," wherein he delineates a group of people who, if necessity arose, would go onto his list of convenient "customers" whom society would not miss.

On his list is the

         Idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone.
         All centuries but this and every country but his own.

So apparently, at least these to recognised the theme of remembering the past as being better than it really was.

It's my opinion that at some points in history (the 1950s, perhaps) the focus was on the future and not the past.  It was the space-age.  Cars looked sleeker.  People envisioned space travel.    

Then again, maybe I'm guilty of my own nostalgic myopia.  The 1950s also was a time of yellow and avocado coloured appliances, polyester suits, and cars with monstrously ugly tail fins.

.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad (and Foreign) Wolf?

Fear is back in fashion, at least if the chattering classes are to be believed.  Not that it ever went out, of course.


In the space of a week, we've seen at least a couple of flaps that lead to cries of 'xenophobia.'  First, German chancellor Angela Merkel, in addressing young members of her party, made the comment that Germany's attempts at building a "multicultural society have utterly failed."  And more recently, liberal columnist and writer Juan Williams was excommunicated from even more liberal National Public Radio for comments he made regarding his personal fear of people who "are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims."


Both cases resulted in a wave of editorials on the impolitic nature of the comments.   In particular, James Carroll of the Boson Globe here declaimed a perceived rising tide of xenophobia.


Whatever one's opinions of the comments, I think it's fair to ask, "where does one draw the line between a legitimate desire for a nation and its people to ask those who wish to join them to accommodate their new homeland, not the other way round, and real, honest-to-goodness xenophobia - the irrational fear of those who are 'foreign' solely because they are foreign."


Setting aside the history of Germany towards its ethnic and religious minorities and semantic arguments about what a "Christian" country is, if one examines the facts on the ground - not only in Germany, but more generally in Western Europe - is it fair to ask how successfully the so-called multi-cultural model has actually worked, and not in some sort of Pollyanna way, but in reality?  Are ethnic Germans and ethnic Turks skipping through fields of daisies singing "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke?"


Carroll's own article points to second and third generation immigrants with scant language skills, stuck on the economic fringe.  The Guardian in London - hardly the English equivalent of National Review  commented on, e.g., the fact that German mosques need to bring in Turkish imams because the population doesn't speak German sufficiently well, and  there are simply none trained in Germany who can speak Turkish.  Regularly, we are treated to stories about riots in the ethnic banlieues of Paris, or the murders of people like Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands.


I disagree with Angela Merkel on at least this - Western democracies, and in particular the US, are pluralistic societies, and to some degree, innovation, growth, and advancement in the arts, science, culture, and industry have been the hallmarks of the West for nearly 500 years because of our willingness to incorporate new ideas.  And I think that our societies benefit enormously when industrious, enterprising people are welcomed to our shores.  Nations that shut their doors to new paradigms are doomed to stagnation and decline - one need look no further than China during the end of its imperial days, or the Arab middle east today.


But I think it's entirely appropriate as part of the bargain that those coming make an attempt to assimilate to the nation that they've chosen to join.  And it's not xenophobia to ask that some core principles that can define a nation beyond simply a geographic, economic, and political corporation be identified.  


E pluribus unum, despite what Al Gore mis-spoke some years ago, means  America is more than a place to sleep and way to earn a dollar.


Put simply - Carroll is right that this is not a "Christian" country; but separation of Church and state equally applies to separation of Mosque and state.  And in this respect, Williams's comments that those who self-identify ostentatiously that, first and foremost, they are any particular religious adherents and then and only thenAmericans are cause for pause, whether they be extremist Christians, Jews, or, yes, Moslems.

Educating Sebastian - Education and the Crab Pot

Up on the shore they work all day
Out in the sun they slave away

While we devotin'
Full time to floatin'
Under the sea

Just finished reading the excellent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System by acclaimed education researcher and writer Diane Ravitch.  On the whole, it's an excellent, fair treatment of the current infatuation with school testing, accountability, and choice in the zeal to reform our troubled system of public education.  I don't agree with much of what Ravitch writes, and she's a bit too unquestioning of the motives of the big teacher unions, but the book is a good read.

Her ultimate conclusion - that applying corporate models of statistical testing and reward or rebuke - is at the least, not a panacea for the problems of public education and perhaps actually is undermining the real purpose, which is to offer the best education to the most students possible.

One area I do find particularly problematic is her conclusion that the introduction of school choice, either through vouchers, charter schools, or some admixture of the two will lead to an even worse situation than the current status quo, in large part because the results show that the benefits of this sort of reform lead to the decidedly muddled result that some students do particularly well under such a scheme, and some students show little to no benefit or even do worse.

Her analysis asks "Who are the students who benefit?"

Well, the most important predictor of who will receive the most benefit from vouchers/charters are those students whose parents are heavily involved and invested in their childrens' educations, and those students who are most motivated to learn. Those whose parents do not bother to go to parent/teacher conferences, who spend hours in front of the tee vee and not books, and who are more interested in disrupting the class than learning do not show any significant benefit from being placed into a "better" learning environment.

The charters/private schools that do succeed succeed because they have the ability to impose discipline on their students, demand that they listen to their teachers, and can remove from the classroom or expel students who fail to do both.

In short, the "good" students.

Carrying her argument a bit further, if the "good" students are removed and sent to the charter/private school, what's left back in the "regular" public schools are the kids who need the most "help."

This of course is no revelation, at least not if one spends any time to think about the problem.

What I find troubling here is then the question that Ravitch asks implicitly: "What is the role of universal, public education, especially in poor urban areas?  She is troubled (rightly) that the current reform agenda will undermine the traditional, democratic role of the public schools, perhaps leading to ever more unequal outcomes for those at the bottom.

I suppose that Ms. Ravitch has the luxury of worrying about such a thing whilst all the time her children presumably attend "good" schools, and live in a home where books and learning are valued.

The issue with Ms. Ravitch's proposal is what is called the crab pot analogy.  Simply put, if crabs are captured and placed into temporary holding pots, some may struggle towards the top and escape, but will ultimately be pulled back into the pot by others at the bottom, and thus, none escapes.

Trapped in terrible schools are students who truly want to learn, who will do as they are instructed by their teachers, will put in the extra effort over their books, who will eschew television to complete their work, and whose only real means of escaping poverty is education. Students who, if not offered the scholarships/vouchers/charter schools will in all likelihood be condemned to remain in the crab pot.

Ultimately, our public schools should have a vision of providing the best education to as many students as they can.  But is there not room for some sort of help for the poor who value education and are willing to put the time and effort into obtaining it?  If I were the parent of a bright, motivated child whose only crime was being poor, I would be somewhat angry at the misplaced concern of the upper middle class about democracy in my neighbourhood.

Question: Is There Actual Value to an MBA?

The title of today’s walk on the random side is of course a rhetorical device.  Obviously, an MBA degree itself does have value.  It is at the same time a credential and the keys to the door behind which the higher steps on the career ladder are hidden.  This door, in my personal experience, is jealously guarded by those who already have the key (i.e., other MBA types) who do not want the barbarians - people with other types of education and skills - past the gates.  It's equally apparent that inside our top biz schools, valuable instructions on hair styling, shoe polishing, and how to insert flashing transitions into impenetrable and opaque PowerPoint slide decks are being provided.

No; the question I ask is, beyond the ipso facto value of putting those three letters on to your curriculum vitae, is the information taught in an MBA school of any actual, demonstrable value?

The question came to mind today as I read through the brilliance on display at the blog for the Harvard Graduate School of Business.


The article, titled “Pharma’s Future Depends on These Three Trends,” was prepared by Sunil Gupta, a chaired professor of “business administration.”  Professor Gupta holds forth over a number of paragraphs over what the pharmaceutical industry needs to do to succeed.  The tone taken implies that the industry itself is in peril, which in at least my opinion, greatly overstates the case.

What earth-shaking trends does the professor identify?  The incursion of generic products, the importance of emerging markets, and the dawn of evidence-based medicine.

Taken as a group, all of these ideas are more or less correct.  The value of such information is, shall we say, dubious.

Whilst all of these "insights" are relevant, and may in fact be helpful to people unfamiliar with the current state of pharma (e.g., MBA students at Harvard), they are all well-known and part of the DD process in the pharma companies I know of.  "Evidence-based medicine" and individualised treatments are not a wave of the future, but in fact are here, now. And have been for some time. The approach is successful, but any company that is not currently operating with this in its workstream is one that is almost sure to fail. Soon.

The branded generics approach is one that has been considered by all of the big, branded pharma companies; some have adopted it (e.g., sanofi-aventis) and some have not. The jury is out as to how well this will play.

Professor Gupta’s points about emerging markets, especially India, are somewhat novel and intriguing.  India as a market presents challenges unique to India. China has its own basket of opportunities and challenges, but I think is a far better bet in the long term.  And there are other emerging markets that may in the short to medium term present even better opportunities.

In short, the challenges facing pharma are not marketing; not in the traditional sense.  Increasing strains on large, frequently government-payors, demands for increasing evidence of value for medicine, and massive demographic shifts are putting pressure on the drug development process that no amount of marketing wizardry is going to solve.  The solutions, such as they are, are going to revolve around development strategies, reliance on genetic and other bio-markers for identification of targeted patient populations and sub-populations, increased use on economic models to support the clinical process, and creative ways to work with and help payors circumscribe their budgets.  They do not involve clever, short-sentenced, poorly-referenced PowerPoint slide decks.

The bottom line here is that what I see coming out of the mouths (and pens and keyboards) of high-priced MBA graduates is largely bromides, case studies, obvious “solutions,” and generally cliches of marginal utility.  Very, very little creative, innovative, or provocative ideas ever emanate from their well-coiffed heads.  The reason may be that business school ‘classes’ largely consist of case studies, many of which represent mistakes made in the past by businesses.  

These suggestions would be of very high value to, for example Wile E. Coyote, who seems forever doomed to fall into the same traps, Saturday after Saturday.  Perhaps if he got an MBA, he would not use ACME for his instant-hole, explosive, and propulsive needs.  Better yet, he might figure out that the coyote-bird-meal paradigm needs to be re-examined.

But for a business looking for actual, workable change solutions, I am less sure.